MineCraft: Mine The Gap, Day 1

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As possibly the biggest PC indie hit in years (despite still being in Alpha), MineCraft demands your attention. What kind of game is it? What makes it special? Maybe you don’t know, and you expect us to tell you. Well, okay.

MineCraft is a building game, essentially. You’re dropped into a randomised, overwhelmingly cuboid world with no goals but continued survival, and you build. Every day this week I’ll be playing a game of MineCraft on the hardest setting and reporting on my progress, giving you not so much a taste of the game but a juicy banquet. It’s probably worth mentioning that I haven’t actually played MineCraft before, either. Dig into the first course right after the jump. It features sheep, flowers, a burial and a dreadful boating accident.

There she is! My virgin territory, freshly generated, overflowing with life. Look! It has square clouds and a square sun, and square sheep and square pigs, and square trees. The brown, cuboid thing in the foreground is my character’s stubby appendage, my bare hand, with which you can quite rapidly tear apart wood and stone, because that’s the kind of game MineCraft is.

Now, onto the important question: What shall I build? I shall build it all, clearly. All of it.

First things first though: shelter. In MineCraft horrible beasties and uglies come out when the sun sets, and since I have no means of defending myself (yet) I need very much to not be here when it happens.

The above cliffside looks like as good a place as any. The black speckles on some of the higher stone blocks are coal, which is important. All that’s left for me to do is rip a me-sized gap in the rocks. Having torn apart a couple of trees on the way here (God, this is the manliest game) I have all the necessary lumber. Open up the MineCraft wiki and HERE WE GO.

STEP ONE: Open inventory. Craft logs into wood.

STEP TWO: Craft wood into sticks.

STEP THREE: Craft four pieces of wood into a crafting table.

STEP FOUR: Place crafting table in world and go over and use it.

STEP FIVE: Using this new, bigger crafting grid, craft two sticks and three pieces of wood into a MIGHTY wooden pickaxe.

LET’S DO THIS RRAAAAAARGH~

CHO!

It’s a good bit of hole, one any man would be proud of. A real manhole. But I can’t sit around giving myself a blowjob. Night is about to fall. It’s dangerous times, and I need to skedaddle.

By crafting some pieces of coal with some sticks, I create torches and use them to illuminate the inside and outside of my cavern, which is starting to look quite homely. This done, I hastily disassemble the crafting table with a few swings of my wooden pickaxe and proceed with the aforementioned skedaddling.

Using some of my now-abundant collection of rocks, I barricade the entrance to my fort. Ain’t nobody getting in here. This done, I spend the rest of the night at my workbench, crafting everything I can think of.

At this point I need to state just how unspeakably fun all this is. Shredding and re-assembling the game world is quick, tactile and satisfying. The entireity of MineCraft taps directly into that part of your mind that made it so fun to build forts out of sofa cushions as a kid. Even digging a hole in MineCraft brings on an inexplicable thrill of freedom and panic. It’s embarrassing. The game’s also as pure a definition of a sandbox game as there’s ever been. The way everything in MineCraft can be dug out and put somewhere else, the world actually feels like it’s made of sand.

Come the next morning, I’ve made myself a variety of stone-headed tools- a couple of pickaxes, a hoe, a spade, an axe, even a sword. Once that was done I still had time to kill, so I turned my leftover stones into a forge, and my leftover wood into some steps and a boat. All in one night! Robinson Crusoe was a right lazy bastard.

Disaster. While attempting to position the steps I built the night before, I accidentally place them facing the wrong way, in the wrong place, and then accidentally rip up some earth for good measure. This is the worst thing. It is the apocalypse. Who would live in a house like this? An asshole, that’s who.

I decide to take out my misery on any and all animals docile enough to be nearby.

A discovery! While attempting to murder a sheep with my sword I find myself hacking blocks of cloth off of him instead. What am I going to do with cloth? Not sure yet, but I’m sure it’ll be fabulous. You’ll see.

Having completed my quest for vengeance, I decide to go exploring. Finding nothing but a few flowers (which I stole, obviously) I return home.

Or I return to where I thought my home was. It wasn’t there. I continued on for a bit longer, and was at the peak of a mountain with unrecognisable terrain in every direction when I finally admitted I was lost. I couldn’t find my home. Everything I’d achieved in the last hour had been for nothing. Everything I’d dug, and built. All wasted. I would have to start again. I would have to pick up the shattered and muddied pieces of my broken dreams, and – oh. Wait. That’s my cave down there. What’s it doing down there? Stupid cave.

Filled with nothing but loathing for Stupid Cave, I decide to try and pretty it up a bit.

You know, I planted a lot of flowers when I was playing Wurm Online, too. I wonder if I’m lusting after a gardening game. As for the small field, that’s really just for show. I don’t have any seeds to plant yet. I am all front.

At the back of Stupid Cave, I carve out a small staircase. What I really need to continue up the tech tree is iron ore, and that means mining, which is pretty simple process in MineCraft. You just dig.

And dig.

And dig.

And dig. What surprises me most is how claustrophobic this tunnelling feels. You get a genuine sense of being under a thousand tons of rock, and despite my tunnel being a single, long, downward curve, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m perpetually at risk of getting lost in it. It’s excellently creepy.

After cutting out something the size of a small videogame dungeon over the course of another in-game night and day I find I have five pieces of iron ore and one piece of gold ore to show for it. That is fuck all. Dispirited, I decide to go on another of my ill-advised adventures. This time, I’ll test out my boat.

This is the body of water nearest Stupid Cave. Wet! Dangerous! Big! Let’s make it a little more manageable by plopping the boat down.

My goodness! Have you ever seen a more noble vessel? If you say yes, you’re lying. Looks like the sun is setting. I’ll just nip over to that island in the distance and back.

For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, there’s a dodgy-sounding noise the moment my boat touches the opposite shore, the boat vanishes and I’m dropped into the water like a stone. Pulling myself onto the island, I rapidly assess the situation. The sun’s about to set. It’ll take me forever to swim back to Stupid Cave. I’m stranded, I still have no decent means of defending myself, and the monsters will spawn any minute.

I dig what amounts to a large grave. All is silent. Do monsters make any noise? I pack the dirt back in place over my head and jab a torch into the wall.

I’m trapped. Buried alive. The island is tiny and I have no idea how deep the water around it is, so I can’t dig in any direction because I’m terrified I’ll flood the chamber.

My heart skips a beat as I hear a monstrous groan from directly above me. There’s something up there, and it wants in. Carefully, I equip my sword. The number of hours between now and dawn stretch and recline in front of me. It’s going to be a long wait.

My small cave has become a sprawling warren of odd corners, waterfalls and dead ends – I carry a huge supply of torches with me as I mine so I can fill the dark areas with light to stop the creatures from appearing and ruining my beautifully crafted home.

Also, skylights are a must, even if they take an entire day / night cycle to dig, starting from under ground and going straight up – dropping dirt blocks beneath you until you break out into open air.

It always bothers me immensely. I usually just rage internally rather than say anything due to the aforementioned looking-like-a-prick, though. The other one is when people claim they “could care less”. I’m pretty sure they mean they “couldn’t care less”, but say the exact opposite. That’s not just poor grammar, it’s dumb.

Hehehehe… the first thing you really need in minecraft is coal. Wood is easy to get. With coal + wood you can make torchs, so you can start digging. As soon you have some rocks, you can make some rock-based pickaxes.
From theres… you built and built and enhance your equipament, replace it wen break.
Some obvious buildings are “beacons”, like gigant turrets that will help you search your home if you get lost, and crafting stations.. with lots of furnaces to make some really strong industry.
There are more resources in caves, so probably you have to go there.
I have read that dificult mode is easier than normal, because a bug. The mobs in Minecraft can really be scary. And make lots of sounds, like ssssHHHHHHSss…. krek krek, kreck… the sounds of his hunger for your meat..

Notch has been talking about the paypal thing on his twitter account. Basically, Paypal wants to hold 5% of his sales for 90 days as a reserve of some sort, but they are unfreezing the account. He’s fed up with paypal anyway, and his new business manager is busy looking for alternatives.

The problem is that no real alternative exists to Paypal. People have told him to switch to Google Checkout, which would be a good idea, if they offered sellers accounts in Sweden, which they don’t.

Paypal are just about the only globally supported intermediary available. It’s not good, but if he wants to keep the game available to as many people as possible, then thats how its gotta be for the time being.

It sounds like he’ll be getting it back. But how long they’re going to be maintaining this policy of retaining 5% I don’t know. Maybe it’s only that one sum they’re retaining temporarily. Maybe he’ll have to stop accepting payments into that account until he can drain it and close it for good.

It’s an extremely dodgy practice in any case. I just don’t see how any perceived dodgy transactions would warrant this kind of response.

Yay, Minecraft coverage! Though it will probably end tomorrow with a single sentence: “IRON! LOTS OF IRON!” and then Quinns will spend the rest of the week giggling and enjoying the one game that ended this terrible RPS meme.

Well, technically he is a minecraft-baby. His first steps in the world. As the riddle of the sphinx, Quinns is on all four.

That reminds me, when I have time to play -and the PP debacle has dissolved, I will buy it. I will start the game, craft a ginormous sphinx, tell him to ask me the riddle and then not only break his nose, but his whole head.

Brilliant game, but has anyone else wussed out and set it to Peaceful Mode? I’ve lost hours to the digging and building, but stopping every ten minutes to ward off beasties doesn’t quite have the same appeal.

A tip for your shelter: You might want to consider using blocks of Glass (by smelting Sand, if it’s available) in some parts. Not only do they make a nice sun roof/moon roof, you can also use them as windows to see if any Creepers decided to stop by and camp outside for you overnight (very possible).

They can in fact see you through the glass (their heads track you), but will not explode. Also, in my personal experience, I have yet to see creepers disappear during the day, but supposedly it happens. I can’t even count how many times it’s been, *Walks out door* “Nice day out.” *Ssssssssss…* “Awww, mothe..” BOOOM!

Yeah, they can see you through the glass, but won’t always go aggro. There’s a chance that they’ll just continue wandering. But if you do spot one hanging around for you overnight, you’ll at least be prepared to fight them off during daylight. Best to be safe than exploded.

People are hyped for this game, not because the game is already now (which is still clearly an alpha, after a few days of novelty) but because being still an alpha you can feel that is going to be a great game with some more months of development.

Heh, you felt claustrophobic and a little lost in your self dug tunnel? Wait until you discover one of the vast cave systems the game generates. At first they are SO exciting. Gigantic underground rooms with iron and coal in the walls. Oh, and Skeletons and Zombies lurking around! Then long tunnels leading to dizzying shafts. You keep following these, heading ever deeper. Now your caverns have red ore, gold, and diamond. So exciting. You turn a corner to find a beautiful lava-fall / waterfall combo!

But then it just starts to wear on you. How many days have gone by? Where am I? The constant shocking “TWANG” of an arrow, or “SHHHHHHHH” of a creeper start to drive you mad. A strange sense of panic starts to seize you. You need to see the sun. You start rapidly climbing, but keep hitting dead ends. How do you get out? When you can’t take it anymore you just start digging up, furiously hacking at stone and earth. And then, finally, a spot of green and the sun!

(BTW, I wouldn’t recommend playing on the hardest difficulty. The caves become a real death trap then. It’s one of the best parts of the game, but exploring is difficult when death is around every corner.)

All of these gamebooster and “system care” tools are worthless, IMHO. And especially Uniblue’s line in registry cleaning / PC boosting nonsense. Right, adding another process or service will INCREASE performance?

But Minecraft uses a Java-coded engine, it WILL require more than even a dual-core Celeron to perform adequately. My little Viewsonic Viewbook struggles with it even on the lowest graphics settings, because the SU2300 CPU just isn’t enough to handle the Java engine. So CPU and RAM are probably more crucial for good performance in Minecraft, than a feisty GPU.

All of these gamebooster and “system care” tools are worthless, IMHO. And especially Uniblue’s line in registry cleaning / PC boosting nonsense. Right, adding another process or service will INCREASE performance?

But Minecraft uses a Java-coded engine, it WILL require more than even a dual-core Celeron to perform adequately. My little Viewsonic Viewbook struggles with it even on the lowest graphics settings, because the SU2300 CPU just isn’t enough to handle the Java engine. So CPU and RAM are probably more crucial for good performance in Minecraft, than a feisty GPU.

All those utilities are crap apart from Gamebooster, if you’ve got a weak CPU and you’re trying to play something which is CPU heavy like this or dwarf fortress, it will deliver a much smoother experience.

I had a lot of trouble finding enough resources in Minecraft. Having dug about 3 excursions to the very base of the level (or at least an obisidian bedrock), I collected about 30 iron. I then built a suit of armour, a sword and a pick. With this I sailed to a faraway island where I continued to dig down in the hope that this island had more natural resources. I was in luck! I found an underground cave and collected about 40 iron, 20 gold and 3 diamond. Then was killed by an exploding thingy, and lost the lot.

Word of warning to others, If theres any chance of death, put your valuables in a chest ASAP.

Oh dear, I fear these are going to get me to fire up Minecraft again. In doing so I’ll promptly devise grandiose plans that will quickly fall apart when I get lost in a fantastically large cave system that still gives me the wiggins even if I play on Peaceful (seriously, those cave sounds C418 made are tops). This will quickly be followed by watching other players on Youtube, getting Mine envy, followed by Mine depression and then maybe Mine acceptance.

Not sure who I hate more – Quinns for writing this, you chaps who so annoyingly said there were youtube videos or the more evil man who wrote the game… Or myself for foolishly watching going – heh, that looks like silly fun. I’M AT WORK PEOPLE. I HAVE WORK TO DO. Not spend the time watching youtube vids wondering if my work machine can run it and then if guy next to me won’t bat an eyelid as I dig for victory.

My first game was similar, I scaled a huge mountain and thought it would be clever to build an observation tower, not realising that my chances of finding coal high up a mountain was basically zero. When the sun set I resorted to patching up my mostly-stone tower with dirt, but as the gloom grew I started to panic and splat dirt blocks randomly around me until there was blackness. Then the growls, first from above, then to the left, then the right, then all directions together. Inevitably, I ended up waiting what I thought was a decent amount of time, then mining out tentatively, hoping to see the sky, but of course I had no way of knowing where I was digging, and then I heard that glorious hiss.

@Cat: 10 Euros is all it costs for now, but it’ll go up once it finally hits Beta and then again whenever it gets around to being called done. Also note, that 10 Euros gets you everything Notch makes for Minecraft for all time more or less. As such it is an exceedingly excellent bargain. A steal even.

I’ve managed to waste the entire day working out the basic crafting process, then it rapidly started getting dark and I had nowhere to live built and nothing more than a wooden axe and some twigs to my name.

In a proper moment of panic I leapt halfway up a cliffside and frantically bashed a 2×2 niche into the stone, and am cowering in abject fear listening to shambling and moaning somewhere directly outside. I can see odd lights in the distance (stars? evil eyes?) and ominous shapes wandering about in the distance. I would attempt to tunnel a bit further in but I’m convinced something will jump me while my back is turned. Not convinced I’ll make it to morning at this rate.

It’s great so far. Haven’t been this scared in a game since the mummies in Dungeon Master.

Thought you were embellishing a little but no, this game truly is a horror game on the more difficult levels. I’ve yet to die but I’ve had a few very close calls, especially when accidentally mining right down into a cave already there. Haven’t found gold or redstone or any rare material yet, but that’s because I’m still trying to get more cooked hams for last time I did something stupid, and then for the next time I do something stupid. Took the glass idea to heart so I can see what time of day it is if I’m in the right spots, so that’s really helpful. Dropped (by accident, been trying to find them for a while) into one of the surviving pieces of one of my earlier caves. Then I realized that the corridor and the two halls that connected to it were all that was left. Then typed this post and experienced an odd sense of deja vu because I feel I just wrote the exact same thing as someone else did before. The bit about refinding caves.

It’s a fab game, but when I watch what other folk have done I get a bit deflated at my lack of building creativity. I’m holding off the multi-player until I can make something which actually looks nice!

The scariness of the monsters is nearly unrivalled, especially the sounds they make in the night.

I’m completely hooked on this game; absolutely loving it. There’s a genuinely weird sense of discovery in this game; when you enter a dungeon or cavern, you realise that no-one else has ever seen this before; it’s not been created by a designer. And it’s bizarre how scary the sound of cuboid zombies can be when they’re behind walls all around you. Still having a hard time find enough spider string to make a bow; I may have to build a trap, hmm.